Global strategic goals for the next 18 months

Continuing the consolidation and expansion of the Alter Summit network at European and national level. Not as an end in itself, but to increase our capacity to intensify the dialogue among each other, jointly in accordance with our manifesto and to act with the will to change the balance of power in order to establish a new Europe. To set these goals and initiatives in order to gain visibility. The Greek EU Presidency in the first semester of 2014 represents a new challenge in this context in case the Greek organizations consider new initiatives. Consolidation of the Alter Summit also means involving additional organizations and forces, establishing new national collectives and strengthening of the existing ones, active using of the homepage and eventually publishing a newsletter. In particular we want to enhance the dialogue with movements (e.g. the Blockupy) and movements of the youth, environmentalists and peasants…

We must ensure the functioning and the structure of the AS. Therefore we need sustainable funding. In this respect we must adopt a strategy.

The Manifesto presents a ‘common good’, a collectively developed base and represents the ground for the consolidation of the AS. It shows that there exists a common vision here today to fundamentally change Europe in response to the destructive crisis. It can - at a European and /or a national level - be used for different struggles and confrontations to promote European unity with regard to interpreting the actions and to counteract the fragmentation of the vital forces. A campaign based on the manifesto (publication in different forms including video films, and adequate to the national contexts as well as to conditions in different strata of the society) should be conducted on a European and national scale during the next few months in order to anchor this in the organizations as well as making them visible to the public. We should take the opportunity to present it in conversations to our partners in trade unions, social movements and European umbrella organizations.

Conferences, joint elaboration of positions/viewpoints can promote the necessary dialogue among all participating organizations, enriches the common ground defined in the manifesto while promoting the basics for joint collective actions. The articulation of and exchange between individual initiatives, thematic conferences and a common framework of the AS has to be ensured.

EU politics concern all major social conflicts and influence our daily lives. Europeanization of social struggles requires working to raise awareness of its European aspects. There exist numerous occasions to do so, e.g. the annual debate on the EU-controlled national budgets, austerity policies, the dismantling of democracy, the questions of European foreign policy .... The aim of the AS must be to promote common interpretations, reactivity under concrete circumstances and convergent action capacity and to take initiatives, equally linking and supporting them. Mobilizing tools could be used on a large European scale. We must succeed in articulating the concrete struggles and conflicts more clearly, more visibly at a European level of the confrontation concerned and to make a substantial level of confrontations tangible i.e. making the levers for change visible.

Thematic axes are emerging from the thematic assemblies in Athens
• Struggle against austerity (budget, etc.) and Troika, out of the debt trap;
• Economic governance, ECB and monetary policy;
• Health, housing and education as universal rights;
• respect of and rights for migrants
• Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement;
• right-wing populism and right-wing extremism as a challenge for the movement against austerity and for democracy
• The feminist perspective as a transversal, central theme
• War and peace – “Europe and the world”

The European elections in May 2014 will crystallize significant disputes, bringing the subject more and more into the open and providing occasions for debates. We are aware that Trade Unions and social movements from countries not belonging to the EU also participate in the AS and that EU is not identical with the European Union.

As stated in our functionning rules, the AS is a process, led by TU and social movements however accepting political actors who are supportive to our demands. Accordingly, the AS will interfere in the debate around the elections on the basis of the manifesto and in order to promote its autonomous agenda. Different initiatives can be taken, such as the interpellation of the European political parties and the currently existing parliamentary groups (also demanding them to provide public spaces and to make an account of their activities) as well as the organizing of public debates, interventions, and introducing our manifesto. Let us respect in this regard also probable differences among our members concerning the EP election and that the main arena of the AS is the social struggle.

A further increase of right-populist and right-extreme influence, now including as well neo-nazis, is to be expected. This is a major challenge and we have to cope with it as a common issue which does not concerns only specialists of antifascist struggles. We will tackle the issue on a European level. Here we also must not fall in the trap of alliances with bourgeois parties and thereby appearing, unintentionally on the side of the forces which are responsible for the austerity. The adequate strategy in the struggle against the extreme Right is subject of broad discussions among the social movements. In this context a well prepared conference at the end of 2014 or the beginning 2015 could be extremely useful.